Cloud for Monitoring and Logging Solar Energy and Battery Usage

Abstract

Data Acquisition Systems (DAS) can be used to gather changing energy parameters derived from various energy sources. This paper discusses how Arduino based data acquisition systems (DAS) can be used to gather solar energy samples and battery level information for remote monitoring and storage in the cloud. Arduino code was developed on Arduino IDE. An open source third party application was used to capture the Arduino serial transmitted values onto a Dropbox folder where it can be shared via Internet. Arduino hardware is connected to the four small 5 V, 1 W solar panels that are loaded with properly calculated resistors and a designed battery level sensor circuit. Solar energy values and battery usage pattern values were successfully stored into Dropbox for monitoring via cloud.